Invoice Positions
An Invoice Position is one piece of customer-facing work that is available, held, invoiced, or no longer usable. It is separate from the Actual Cost Ledger so COMPASS can preserve what happened internally while managing a different commercial lifecycle.
Think of the Actual Cost Ledger as a receipt. The Invoice Position is the note attached to that receipt saying whether it can be charged to the customer.
When COMPASS Creates An Invoice Position
COMPASS creates an open Invoice Position when all of these conditions are true:
- The source creates an Actual Cost Ledger entry against a Budget Item.
- The Budget is a Service Revenue budget.
- External Settlement Mode is External invoicing.
- Invoice Basis is Actual Costs.
- The Budget has a Billing Profile.
Eligible sources include desk time, travel time, trip transportation, trip stay, project expenses, and manual actual-cost adjustments. The position copies the commercial description, quantity, unit price, total, date, project, Budget, Budget Item, and Billing Profile needed for invoicing.
A Budgeted Amounts budget does not create a position for each cost. Billing works from the approved budget remainder instead.
Priced Timesheets and Trip costs without a Budget Item do not become Invoice Positions. They first need a decision in Billing -> Open Items -> Billing decisions. When marked Invoice customer, they appear as individual items that you can add through Create New Invoice.
Understand Invoice Position Statuses
Invoice Position statuses show where each piece of receivable work sits.
| Status | What it means | What you can normally do |
|---|---|---|
| Open | The position is available for invoicing. | Select it, mark it not billable, or edit the source while it stays commercially free. |
| Reserved | A draft invoice currently holds the position. | Open the related invoice; release it from the draft before changing billability. |
| Invoiced | The position was committed to an issued invoice. | Review it through the invoice history. |
| Void | The old position is kept for history but is no longer usable. | Review it for audit; do not invoice it. |
Reservation prevents two people from invoicing the same position at the same time. If another draft reserves a position while you are working, COMPASS refreshes the available list and asks you to remove the unavailable row.
Mark Work As Not Billable
Use Mark as not billable when the work happened but your organization has decided not to charge the customer. You can record an optional reason, such as Included in fixed project fee.
The position remains Open, but COMPASS shows a separate Not billable marker. It drops out of the outstanding amount and cannot be selected for an invoice. The source Timesheet, Trip, or ledger entry remains visible and editable.
Only an Open position can change billability. A Reserved, Invoiced, or Void position is locked because it already has a commercial history. Release it from its invoice first when the invoice workflow allows that action.
You can later use Mark as billable to return an excluded open position to the outstanding amount. The old exclusion reason is cleared.
What Happens When Source Work Changes
COMPASS keeps an open position aligned with its source work. Editing an open Timesheet, Trip cost, or manual ledger entry updates or replaces the position. If the position was marked Not billable, the replacement keeps that decision.
Deleting an eligible open source voids the old position instead of erasing the commercial history. A Reserved or Invoiced position protects its source from edits or deletion that would make the invoice untraceable.
Where To Review Invoice Positions
Invoice Positions appear in three useful places.
- Billing -> Open Items -> Positions shows positions across the workspace.
- A project's Billing -> Not yet invoiced section shows positions for that project.
- A Service Revenue budget's Unbilled tab shows positions for that budget.
The table includes Date, Description, Source, Project, Budget, Billing Profile, Quantity, Unit price, Total, and Status. Use filters when you need to trace one person, source type, date range, project, budget, or status.